1. Field of the Invention
This invention is related to the field of multiprocessor computer systems, and more particularly to communicating between partitions in such systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Multiprocessing computer systems include two or more processors connected in some fashion to a memory system and one or more input/output (I/O) devices or peripheral devices. The systems may be designed according to several topologies. One topology is a distributed shared memory system in which a set of nodes, each of which includes at least one processor and a portion of the system memory, are interconnected. A given node is the home node of the system memory included in that node. The memory address space of the system spans the nodes, and thus a given memory address can be mapped to a given node. Typically, such systems are designed to map the entire memory address range across the nodes, up to a predetermined maximum number of nodes.